


the flood i made

by semperfemina



Series: sink. [2]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Rock Band
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 22:04:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/semperfemina/pseuds/semperfemina
Summary: there's a lake and at the bottom you'll find all my friends.so maybe your heart’s too heavy to bear alone - no one can keep on like this forever.(the curtain call. the end.)





	the flood i made

**Author's Note:**

> this is included in a series with a previous work - "sift through the static." themes that are relatively prevalent in this work include substance abuse and dependence and briefly, what could be taken as instances of suicidal ideation. just something to be aware of before reading.

 

> \- 'cause a disaster's a disaster no matter what christian language you drag it though.
> 
> _wolves at night_ , manchester orchestra.
> 
>  

 

* * *

 

 

the band breaks up.

they all see it coming, even wonwoo. he can't play dumb, can't pretend he couldn't read the writing on the wall.

and he wants to say or think something that matters: that it was fun, that it meant something. he wants to say it was a good run. he's not sure if he can say any of those things, though, at the end of it all. he isn't sure what he could say. so he says nothing.

of course the band breaks up. when it happens, it's final - over with for sure, for good. there is no getting back together, and they all know this. there will be no reunion, no change of heart. it falls apart quickly (but somehow, wonwoo thinks it lasted a lot longer than he ever imagined it might) and when it's done, it's done.

things don't come crashing down, though, in the fiery way he sort of expected. it just seems to be the natural order, the way it happens, the execution of all things - crumbling a little here and a little there. a slow, silent weathering. it's natural. it's erosion. and then they just dissolve.

(there is something after this, for all of them. realistically, there has to be. jihoon and mingyu have moved on, they did it, and everyone else will, too. joshua will keep making music, joshua will go somewhere; there is a future in this for josh, wonwoo knows this, the same way he knows there's a future in this for seungcheol. there is always room in the world for a pretty boy with a guitar. there is always room in the world for someone with a smile like seungcheol's, for someone with a heart like seungcheol's.

there's a life after this, wonwoo thinks. he's trying to convince himself of it, but all he can see when he pictures his own future is a screen swimming with snow. white noise.)

and when it's all said and done, when it is finally over, wonwoo feels like the floor has just opened up beneath him.

 _there's nothing_ , he thinks.

_there's nothing._

 

 

 

(when wonwoo was sixteen, he stopped speaking.

it lasted two years, or just shy of it.

wonwoo was sixteen which meant he was angry all the time anyway, angry and sulky and upset at the world. and when he was sixteen, his mom left. and wonwoo was angrier then than ever and one day, he decided he'd stop talking.

so he did.

he spoke to no one, skipped school, stole cigarettes from the convenience store down the block and money from his dad's wallet. wonwoo played guitar, because that's what sullen teenaged boys do, and when he was almost eighteen, wonwoo met jihoon and they talked - wonwoo broke his silence - about music, and they started a band.

years later, the band is broken up, and he and jihoon can hardly stand to be in the same room anymore and he's lost in thought and he mentions, offhand, the years he spent in his self-exiled silence.

"why, though?" mingyu asks.

and wonwoo thinks before he answers - "just because. the same reason i did any of it. just because i could."

because he could - because wonwoo felt hollow, and he needed something to fill up the space, and when he was sixteen, he chose to take the chip off of his shoulder and shove it down deep in his chest and it became what he's got there in the place where he thinks his heart should be.

he told mingyu about this because he thought it was important -

because he thought it might make things make sense.)

 

 

 

wonwoo thought that the end would be this _thing_ \- this big thing, explosive and loud and messy but when the time comes, that isn’t it at all.

it just _is_.

that's the way it tends to go with wonwoo. he notices a trend in himself, in the things he does, the way he treats people and things and situations. he tries his hardest to be flippant, to be resilient; no love lost, he thinks, even when he knows better - knows the feeling of something slipping through his fingers.

there is no smoke, there's no fire. it’s like this, instead -

he wakes up one day, tired, like he hasn’t slept in days and no matter how much he rests, he just doesn’t feel whole. the lethargy stays and soon, he begins to feel like he’s aching and then he begins to feel like he’s falling apart. it’s a slow decline but it’s a downwards spiral all the same. it's like being in a car with no brakes.

he tries to think of a million ways to say “I can’t do this anymore” but none of them sound right.

so he doesn't say anything at all. wonwoo doesn't say a thing; instead, he tucks his head down and stares at nothing and lets darkness creep in to the very edge of his vision.

he gives up.

and he thinks _finally_ -

he thinks - _something i'm good at_.

 

 

 

the first few months after, the world feels upside down.

wonwoo can't sleep.

he's tired all the time but he can't ever sleep and everything around him feels like it might not be real anymore, or maybe he's just not real anymore.

(he finally caves, finally goes and sees a doctor. he tells the doctor about the nights, the hours awake in bed.

i can't sleep, he says, and the doctor looks at him like maybe he thinks wonwoo is lying. it's a staring contest for a while, a stupid fucking game of chicken, and wonwoo is clenching and unclenching his fists at his sides the entire time. he's sitting on one of those high-up exam tables and the room smells like cotton and antiseptic and the paper under him, on the exam table, rustles each time he moves his hands, his fists opening and closing, opening and closing, opening and closing again.

he leaves with a prescription for ambien and a prescription for an anti-depressant. he refills the ambien for the next six months - tosses the zoloft in the trash and chases the first of the sleeping pills with a drink of bourbon in the middle of the day.

he sleeps.)

 

 

 

he doesn’t play their last show.

he couldn't, even if he wanted to.

(he doesn't want to but he couldn't, either way. wonwoo's hand is wrapped in a thick bandage around his wrist up to the top of his palm, right where his fingers start and underneath the bandage, the wound is deep and sore and probably infected. he isn't taking care of it the right way, can't bring himself to, doesn't care to, but the painkillers he takes keep him numb to the pain he feels when he tries to flex his hand or when he tries to do most of anything. numb all over, pins and needles.

 _this_ is the hand he put through a mirror, of course, but that's another thing entirely. that's another part of the story altogether.)

they are playing their last ever show and wonwoo is drunk before it even starts and when he slips away, wanders out the back door of the venue and out onto the street, no one notices. he does this a lot lately; disappears. it's easy enough to do if you make yourself small enough, quiet enough, if you practice holding your breath and you know which way to go to get out.

these days, wonwoo breathes shallow and always looks for the exits.

he doesn't play their last show, doesn't stay to see it.

instead, wonwoo lays awake in the backseat of the van, his phone in his hand -

his fingers hovering just over mingyu's name.

 

 

 

his hand -

one of the last times he saw mingyu, wonwoo wound up putting his own fist through a mirror.

in retrospect, he thinks it was stupid. not that he did it in the first place but that he didn’t _think_ before he did it - behind the mirror was a solid concrete wall and it left his hand black and blue. bleeding and aching.

(it's a long story. it's a mess. with wonwoo, more often than not, it's always a mess and it's always a long story. he sees the pattern, for what the self-awareness is worth. wonwoo imagines himself and the trouble that follows him as a tangible thing, a bag filled with stones that he drags it around everywhere. he keeps it tucked up close under his chin, right next to his chest, he won't let it go. he invites the chaos.)

they only have three or four shows left and wonwoo starts a fight at the bar at one of the venues and winds up with his nose busted and a cut on his cheek. mingyu is there - mingyu sees it all (because now that it's all ending, josh and seungcheol keep inviting mingyu and jihoon around like everything is fine and everyone is friends again and of course, they come.) so mingyu watches the whole thing happen and now he's trying to help; mingyu is _always_ trying to help, no matter what, and he has wonwoo's blood on his fingers.

"what's the point, wonwoo?" he says after a long, long time in silence.

(what a stupid question - there is no point, that's the point. _there's no point to any of this_ , he has half a mind to say. but he doesn't.)

wonwoo doesn’t say anything; instead, he tilts his head back and swallows and when he sits back up, he spits out a mouthful of blood on the floor, in the empty space between where he sits and where mingyu sits. mingyu stills and then he sighs - and then he’s had enough. he throws down the bloodied rag he was holding and he wipes the blood on his own hands onto his pants.

 _fuck it_ , mingyu says. _fuck this, wonwoo_.

when he leaves, wonwoo stares at the mirror for the longest time. then, quietly and unceremoniously, he stands.

and he puts his fist through the glass.

and there's no point to that, either.

 

 

 

he is sloppy fucking drunk when he takes four of the sleeping pills the doctor prescribed.

wonwoo's hand hurts, and all he wants is to sleep, and he's already a fifth of vodka deep. the show is over and he should go back to his hotel room, he should rest, and to do it, wonwoo takes four of the sleeping pills because two don't work anymore.

(and when wonwoo wakes up, he's not in the hotel room. he's in the back of the van and he feels sick to his stomach and he retches and retches, but nothing comes up. he isn't alone either; seungcheol is there, staring at him, brow furrowed, mouth all twisted up.

"don't make me do something i don't want to do," seungcheol says - it's half pleading, half some sort of warning.)

wonwoo wants to call someone.

he wants to call jihoon, because jihoon knows what to do. jihoon always knows what's next, what comes after. jihoon has answers for most everything.

but if he calls jihoon, there will be mingyu right behind him and wonwoo doesn't want that. he doesn't want mingyu to come, too, and to ask him all the questions and look at him the way wonwoo knows he would.

(he wants to call mingyu because mingyu can fix it. mingyu can fix anything. he’s good like that, he’s _too_ good and the spite and anger wonwoo feels the longer that he thinks about keep his hands off of the phone, keep his fingers balled into fists.

wonwoo feels like a house that's gone dark. nobody's home.

mingyu could fix it. quickly, easily, wonwoo is sure, same as replacing a lightbulb or flipping a breaker. mingyu could fix it, could fix him, but that would mean wonwoo would have to let him.

whether it's pride or shame or a combination of the two is up in the air. but it doesn't matter, wonwoo thinks, and he just keeps living life with the lights out, pretends like he has any idea what he's doing, lost in the pitch black.)

 

 

 

before the end of it all, wonwoo goes to mingyu's apartment only once. high out of his mind, it seems like a good idea. he tells himself that he's going to tell mingyu about the band, about the end. wonwoo goes with the intent of telling mingyu that it's just him, the last man standing, and he has no fight left in him. only resignation, only exhaustion.

but mingyu already knows, and wonwoo doesn't make much sense when he tries to explain it anyway.

"what the fuck did you do to your hand?" mingyu asks, and wonwoo looks down at his bandaged hand. it's still bleeding - it probably shouldn't be, but it is, crimson turned pale pink on the top of all the layers of gauze.

mingyu pulls wonwoo into his bathroom, unwraps his hand and tends to it lightly and it should hurt but it doesn't - wonwoo stares up at the fluorescent light over the sink until he feels two of mingyu's fingers against his jaw and wonwoo lifts his still in-tact hand and wraps his own fingers around mingyu's wrist.

"you have to stop," mingyu says. "you have to stop doing this."

( _please, please, please, please_ \- mingyu whispers over and over, like he's meditating, like he's praying. please stop. he is kissing wonwoo's jaw when he says this, a kiss and a whisper, a kiss and a whisper, over and over again and it makes wonwoo feel feverish all over and sick to his stomach and dizzy - he closes his eyes against the way the room starts the spin, the way his vision starts to swim. _please stop doing this, wonwoo_.)

wonwoo doesn't know what to say, so he doesn't say anything at all.

instead, he lets mingyu mouth at his neck. he bites his own tongue until his mouth tastes bitter and coppery and he's worried away a piece of skin from the inside of his lip with his sharp teeth and when he swallows, he swallows a mouthful of blood - _i can't. i can't stop_.

i can't, he wants to say. _i don't know how_.

 

 

 

  
in the end, he's sure that seungcheol is the one who calls mingyu.

wonwoo doesn't have to do it - it's stupid, he thinks, that he's still so worried about his pride.

but it is what it is and wonwoo thinks he's saving face because he's not the one reaching out his hand for help. ( _don't make me do something i don't want to d_ o, seungcheol had said, and if this is it, wonwoo realizes that he's done too much this time. he's pushed too far. mingyu knows - somehow he knows, and he comes.

 _let's go_ , he says, and wonwoo follows him out of the apartment, down the stairs, to the car. he feels like luggage, like baggage.)

he's never seen where mingyu lives when he's sober so he doesn't pretend to know the way. he lets mingyu lead him, as he always has, and just inside the door of the apartment, jihoon is waiting.

"open your bag up," he says this by way of greeting to wonwoo.

"good to see you too, jihoon - "

"open it."

there's a tense pause, longer than it should be.

( _he doesn't have to do that, you don't have to do that_ \- mingyu is in the middle of saying but jihoon scoffs.)

wonwoo reaches for the zipper on the bag and tugs, heaving a sigh. and for good measure, he doesn't just open it; he upends it and the things inside come spilling out, some of it clattering across the floor. mingyu mumbles something - _jesus fucking christ_ \- and wonwoo watches jihoon half-kneel down to poke through the things from his bag. he picks up the bottle of sleeping pills, holds them in one hand, and wonwoo becomes oddly suspicious that it was jihoon that was called to dispatch him and not mingyu after all. secret's out, he thinks, and he wants to laugh - so much for his pride.

"we good?" wonwoo says after a moment and jihoon stands, doesn't look up at him. reads the label on the bottle instead.

"no," jihoon says simply. "but you're fine to stay." he pauses.

"no stupid shit in my house, wonwoo."

jihoon ends it - _i said what i said_ \- and wonwoo heads off in the opposite direction, towards the room he knows is mingyu's.

mingyu follows, after a few moments and he's holding wonwoo's bag, all of the things shoved neatly back inside.

mingyu picks up wonwoo's mess -

just the way he always has.

 

 

 

the first time wonwoo wakes up to find mingyu taking care of him, he thinks it's a dream.

the pills do that -  the sleeping pills. they make him have these insane dreams, vivid dreams, ones that make him certain he's going crazy because they're too detailed and too lucid for him to imagine.

he feels the bed (mingyu's bed) shift under his weight and wonwoo thinks this is one of those dreams, one of the painfully real ones.

mingyu is warm - he's always warm, but fresh from under the layers of his coat and his scarf and his gloves, he's almost too warm.

wonwoo finds himself suddenly craving the warmth, the heat of another body - he wants to be smothered in it, breathless but safe (it's safe, with mingyu it's always safe ) so he lets mingyu wrap his arms around his stomach and pull him close, close, closer until wonwoo's back is pressed flush against mingyu's chest. he lets mingyu hold him here, lets him anchor him down.

and if he feels like he's drowning, it's a good thing. it's a good feeling, a welcome feeling. it's not a dream, wonwoo realizes.

they haven't slept like this in years, together in the same bed, touching this way. he realizes only now that it's been years, that they were both so much different the last time they were this close. they were so much younger. wonwoo doesn't like thinking about it - about all the things that have happened since, the distance between them so great at certain points that wonwoo doesn't understand how they were ever able to fix it, how they were able to ever touch again. how they're able to be here, like this, now.

they haven’t fixed anything - wonwoo knows this. they’ve just gotten better at not busting more of it to pieces.

he sleeps - he rests, for the first time in what feels like months.

 

 

 

it's quiet now, more often that it's not. quiet at night, silent and still in the deepest, darkest, bluest parts.

wonwoo feels listless and lost and he spends hours sometimes on the fire escape or in the kitchen, staring at nothing and wondering when the world went soft and grey with static all around him.

mingyu notices, because mingyu notices everything. there's nothing he doesn't see, even if he pretends to turn a blind eye, and the feeling of being watched, the feeling of being under a microscope sits heavy in the space between wonwoo's shoulders.

 _look away_ , he thinks. _look away_. he tries to will it to happen, but it never does. mingyu is too stubborn - he just keeps staring, peering into wonwoo's life, into the mess there, like it's a diorama that he needs to rearrange or repair.

and for wonwoo, the anxiety of knowing what a fuck-up he is is there, always just under the surface like an itch he can’t get at.

(he thinks about all the things he did that led him here, to this place, to this time, to this moment; it isn't nostalgia and it isn't regret, either. instead, it feels like he's stuck inside his own head and everything he's ever said and ever done plays on a loop, and he can't focus on any one thing long enough to make sense of it. he couldn't say what are the things he's done right or the things he's done wrong - it's all grey and mangled and wonwoo can't ever manage to find the beginning, the turning point, the end. he comes out of it thinking that he's not sure where he is or what he's doing - he comes out of it thinking that everything is broken and out of sorts ; that maybe he's broken and out of sorts.

he thinks about mingyu, he thinks about the two of them - he thinks what life might've been like if they'd been anyone else, anywhere else. and he thinks maybe in another place or another time, he could've done better. he could've been better. he could've let mingyu make him happy, or vice versa. he thinks about it too long and it starts to make his stomach feel knotted up, it starts to make his mouth taste sour.)

 

 

 

love, the way wonwoo sees it, has to be some sort of punishment.

he thinks of love and he thinks of being dissected. vivisected, flayed open, warm and living and crimson.

(this is not him admitting that he loves anyone; this is not him admitting that he loves mingyu.)

there's an ache, a want, a desperation -

what wonwoo wants is this: to be taken apart, disassembled and rearranged again in a way that makes more sense. he wants to be hollowed out, made into something else entirely. (and maybe, at the bottom, deep, deep down he still hopes for the worst: to be different under all the mess, to be someone better, someone easier and less complicated and less uncertain. to be someone, anyone, besides who he is.)

maybe love is thinking of pushing him off a bridge, drowning him in a river.

 _might as well_ , he tells himself, when he considers it long enough.

(this is not him admitting that he loves anyone; this is not him admitting that he loves mingyu -

he's never said that, but he's never not said it either.)

 

 

 

in the time he stays there in the apartment, the third floor apartment that is jihoon and mingyu's, things seem to settle.

they have this silence.

it's a comfortable silence.

(the silence of knowing someone - because wonwoo does know mingyu, and mingyu knows him. it makes the need for questions obsolete and they're so far past small-talk that most of the time they're just silent.)

there's something different about them, though, and it takes wonwoo nearly a month to put his finger on it, to pin it down, but finally he does.

the spark is gone; it isn't there anymore. (wonwoo always imagined it as a physical thing, a tangible thing, a match that stayed lit and burned up between them, but it's gone now. extinguished. he used to feel this rush when mingyu looked at him.

the way mingyu looked at him - it made wonwoo's face flush with heat every time.

now, wonwoo thinks, when mingyu looks at him, all he can really see is sadness - maybe longing, but it's nothing that's red-hot to the touch anymore. mingyu looks at him now and all wonwoo can see is pity, all he can see is all the things that the two of them got wrong.) they lay together in bed at night and mingyu looks at him with those wide, sad eyes and wonwoo thinks it was better when they were both angry all the time, when he wanted to believe that mingyu hated him and that he hated mingyu.

"you can touch me, you know," he'll say to mingyu. it's an invitation, it's permission - (for what? for anything - anything mingyu could want to do, anything he would) - and it will seem that mingyu is considering this. but he won't slide his arms around wonwoo's waist to pull him closer, he won't bracket his fingers around the sharp edge of wonwoo's jaw - he won't curve his mouth around wonwoo's throat.

instead, mingyu will reach between them and he'll tug at one of wonwoo's hands. he'll hold it gingerly in his own for a moment, palm up, and then he'll twine his fingers through wonwoo's. he'll hold wonwoo's hand.

and it hurts worse than anything wonwoo could've imagined.

 

 

 

the listlessness wonwoo feels grows, and grows, and grows.

he's doing better here, in the apartment - color seeps back into his face slowly but surely and he sleeps without the pills most of the time. sleeps curled up next to mingyu, and sometimes at night now, they'll talk about the things wonwoo always imagined normal people talk about before falling asleep. (they talk about school and work and music and sometimes, they remember things - sometimes, they laugh. and the air between them starts to crackle with that same static that used to be there and wonwoo wants this forever; he wants it so badly, and that's why he can't stay. it's why he grows restless.

he all but paces the floors, mingyu watching him from behind a textbook.)

"we could go somewhere," mingyu says one night, the two of them standing in the kitchen, making dinner.

"i'm fine," wonwoo says. he doesn't sound like he believes it very much, but it's all he can think to say. _i'm fine_.

he isn't telling mingyu things - isn't telling him that he already plans to leave and he intends to do it alone, that all he's waiting for is a little forward momentum, a little bit of that escape velocity.

escape. like he has a reason to fight to get away from here, from this apartment, from mingyu. he doesn’t have a reason for most things, and he especially doesn’t have a reason for thinking he needs to leave. it would hurt mingyu to know - wonwoo thinks about it often. 

so he doesn't mean to say it, but that doesn't stop it from happening, doesn't stop the words from being said.

it wasn't supposed to happen like this, he thinks, it wasn't ever supposed to happen at all. he had intended to hold onto it for as long as he needed - to keep the feeling, the word to himself, to keep it tucked deep down and to never, ever say it aloud. he was ready to keep it a secret, his secret, forever; a ballast buried, hidden away. they are both good at this - at saying things that they never should, at saying things that hurt, but wonwoo is far, far better. lately it seems that mingyu has lost the spirit for it. what wonwoo had planned was a vanishing act - here today, gone tomorrow, but that isn’t the way it will go. 

they are standing at the bottom of the stairs that lead up to the apartment and it's dark outside and they meet here, at the bottom of the stairs, because wonwoo is heading out and mingyu is coming in. they stop, they stare at one another.

"i'm going to school soon," wonwoo says, and mingyu smiles. it's a half smile, a placating smile. he says something, says yeah? and before he can ask where or when or why now, wonwoo speaks again.

wonwoo says what he meant to say in the first place - "i'm going to go to the states."

there's a pause - a long pause, and finally mingyu says, "good."

he says, "i hope it makes you happy, wonwoo."

it shouldn't feel this way, but for a moment, it's a sharp, stabbing pain in wonwoo's stomach. wonwoo knows he means it; that makes the ache worse.

 

 

 

 

wonwoo leaves - he goes to los angeles.

(for someone who always thought of what mingyu did as running away, the irony of doing the same thing himself is not at all lost on wonwoo.)

but wonwoo leaving - _running away_ \- is only part of it, of the big picture. it’s circumstantial; not the whole story, not even half. it’s just a piece. there are lots of pieces, it’s just that wonwoo can’t remember the order they go in or the way any of it is supposed to fit together. he remembers things all wrong lately, backwards and out of order.

things he knows are in the past: there’s the last show, the mirror, the bottom of the stairs.

and there are things that are yet to come: there’s the two of them, wonwoo and mingyu, the studio apartment in la.

 

 

 

("we could go somewhere," mingyu says. this is forever ago, when it's still all of them. when they're still in the band.

this is in the back of the van in the winter, and the thermostat is busted and the car is always too hot.

and yes, wonwoo knows mingyu is unhappy - he has seen it happening, witnessed the slow slip into the dark place mingyu is going, has gone, and wonwoo feels helpless to do anything besides watch.

he can't stop it from being real, he can't make mingyu feel any differently than he does. and in the future, he'll realize that hindsight is 20/20 and what he did was wrong. he thinks that it's so shitty and selfish and wrong but he can't just let mingyu leave. _he couldn't let him go_ -

so when mingyu says it - _we could go somewhere_ \- wonwoo waits for a long time before he shakes his head, his hair falling into his eyes and he doesn't reply. instead, he leans in and tangles one hand loose in the front of mingyu's sweater and pulls him closer, angles his mouth against mingyu’s and kisses him slow until they're both breathless.

 _no_ , he finally says, _let's stay_.

and for a while, they do.

for a while, mingyu stays and each day he does, wonwoo feels like he's clipping the down feathers from a bird and still daring it to fly.)

 

 

 

for a while, in la, things are different.

for a while, wonwoo maybe, almost, kinda sorta has it all worked out. he almost has his shit together.

he is going to school to be a writer, which seems like a contradiction, but wonwoo takes the classes and the coursework seriously. him wanting to be a writer, it seems trite and dramatic, even for him. but he can do it, he thinks.

he can be good at this.

he hasn't talked to mingyu in almost five months but for the first time, he thinks this is a peaceful sort of stalemate. maybe he just likes that he's the one in control.

it's too easy to slip, though - it's too easy to find the crowd he was afraid he would find here. it's too easy to find the wrong people - the people that distract him, that make the bad things seem so, so easy and so, so good.

it's the middle of the semester, it's too close to finals. he feels wrong for asking, but he doesn't know what else to do so he calls mingyu.

and it's not the first time, or the second, or even the third or fourth -

he calls, and mingyu comes to save him.

 

 

 

 _let's go somewhere,_ mingyu says. he's smoothing wonwoo's hair back from his face, up off of his forehead.

this is in la, this is in wonwoo's apartment. in his bed, pushed into a corner in the studio. there is light coming in through the bare windows, always - it's never dark here, not really, and never quiet, either. there is noise on the street, the late night ruckus of the city.

this is after he's called mingyu, after he's said everything except help, and mingyu has come here, all this way, all these miles, for him. (the thought makes something deep down inside wonwoo ache, it makes him hurt - it makes him want to wrap his arms around mingyu's neck and pull him closer, until they're lying chest to chest. the thought of someone caring makes him feel human and alive and everything about it stings.)

everything these days feels like salt in an open wound.

in the dim yellow-orange from the street lights, mingyu is staring at wonwoo in the earnest, fixated way he always does; the way he always has.

and for the first time, wonwoo doesn't argue.

 _okay_ , he says - lets himself fall into the heat and pressure of mingyu's hands.

 

 

 

they are in the desert, they are in the car, they are in motel rooms that lease by the hour and diners with sticky floors.

wonwoo can't explain the vacancy inside of him, the lack of anything real. he can't make sense of it and he can't explain it to anyone, not even to mingyu.

he realizes that every time he's thought he hit rock bottom over the past year, there's still been more. there's still been further to fall. and each time he's thought he's sunk down as much as he can, there's always been something else to kick a bruise into the softest parts of him.

(losing mingyu, losing the rest of them, losing his mind somewhere along the way. how much deeper can it go, how much further down? he feels buried, feels like the earth around him could just swallow him up and he'd be lost underground for forever.)

he wonders how much things can keep falling apart. he wonders how much is left until it finally all starts getting pieced back together. he wonders how much more of it he can stand.

 

 

 

when mingyu says somewhere, this isn't exactly what wonwoo imagined, but it's what he gets. he's too sick, strung out, too busy coming down to care. they leave the apartment in los angeles in a rented care and they start driving. they don't stop for a long, long time.

in the desert, on the side of the road, mingyu buys a bag of oranges.

they drive halfway to vegas and they stop at the last place with rooms to rent for the next hundred miles or so.

the room looks like something time forgot - ugly and brown and dim and just inside the door, wonwoo takes his sunglasses off. there are waterspots on the ceiling.

"romantic," he says, looking over at mingyu.

"right," mingyu says. "that's just what you need right now, wonwoo. romance."

he knows that in three days, maybe a week, he'll come out of this feeling a lot better. he'll come out on the other side of it, sober and disoriented and this is it, he tells himself. this is the last time he's going to do this.

and if it doesn't stick, wonwoo doesn't know - he'll have to think of something more permanent.

they spend four days in the motel room in the desert and the room smells like sweat and vomit and citrus fruit but wonwoo manages to detox, not for the first time in his life, without dying. (and mingyu is there the entire time, next to him on the ugly bedspread, kneeling next to him in the shallow water in the bath. mingyu doesn't leave, and wonwoo gets through the worst of it and he doesn't say thank you, but he doesn't think he has to.)

on the fourth day, wonwoo peels one of the oranges and says, to the air between the two of them - "i wanna go home."

and mingyu says me, too.

mingyu says - i'll take you home.

 

 

 

they go back to seoul, back to mingyu's apartment, together.

"please don't say i told you so," wonwoo whispers into the dark between them, the first night back.

"why would i do that?" mingyu asks. he looks startled, but more than that he looks wounded. he's looking at wonwoo like they don't know each other better than that. "i would never do that, wonwoo."

 

 

 

(the first time he met mingyu, wonwoo had just turned nineteen and his voice was still rough like sandpaper from years of disuse.

when he first met mingyu, the very first time, it was outside of a bar that they were too young to be at but it was at jihoon's behest and wonwoo could feel that he was being looked over, top to bottom. he was being sized up. the first time they met, mingyu stared at wonwoo like he was a puzzle, a rubiks cube, a riddle he was meant to be solving.

and then eventually, mingyu smiled. his eyes crinkled at the corner when he smiled. his smile was sharp and pointy and curious and wonwoo hated it - wonwoo thought he looked like a kid. too honest; foolish.

he _was_ a kid - they both were.

"we're going to be friends," mingyu had said - yelled over the music.

"i'm sure you've got plenty of friends already."

"none like you," mingyu replied and he smiled again, the same smile from earlier but it struck wonwoo differently this time - it made him feel visible, all of a sudden, made him feel like he was the only person mingyu had ever smiled at. it felt like a secret between the two of them.

mingyu had said - _no_ - 

 _no one like you_.)

**Author's Note:**

> boy, do i hate this, but it was in my head and it wouldn't go away until i got it out. title taken from at the bottom by brand new. as always, find me on twitter @cliffparades (my private account where you can feel free to add me) or @starshelled (which is pretty exclusively just a kpop spam account) and be my friend.


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